Rude And
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: A DoctorxRose story, except a bit unusual. Each regeneration seems to get younger and hotter. One shot.


**A/N: Another one of those one-shots, although technically this one fits into a much later part of a longer fic I'm sort of working on. Feedback is much loved.**

**Rude And**

Its basically a tragedy that leads to it.

She can be forgiven for forgetting the exact extenuating circumstances; she, for her part, was half drunk at the time, while he, for his part, was busy being far too heroic, as usual. Whatever the case, the result was the same. Golden bursts of purifying, scalding, raw, molten light, energy, some sort of last march of the cells of this particular body of the last Time Lord, in his tenth incarnation and headed for his eleventh. If you have to go, the process seemed to say, go out with a bang.

And if she misses those wide brown eyes, if she wishes she'd ruffled that thick dark hair into incomprehensible disorder a little more often, if she wishes she'd kissed that thin and expressive mouth a few more times than she actually had, and tasted a little more of that classically white, deceptively English skin, especially the parts of it hidden by clothing, parts which she did indeed regret the loss of, most if not all of it was momentarily forgotten as she stared at this new man, new face and new, presumably, everything.

She stutters.

"Sorry?" he says, and she is delighted, in a weak-kneed, dry-mouthed sort of way, to discover that in addition to everything else, he has suddenly acquired, God help her, an Irish accent. An Irish accent that made her want to cover him in raspberry fudge and then lick it very thoroughly off. It was the Irish part that added the bit about the raspberries; any other accent probably would have produced longings for mere walnut fudge. Well, perhaps not walnuts, unless they were very strategically placed.

"Sorry?" he said again, because her next comment was obfuscated rather, her tongue inhibited by the sudden proliferation of drool her salivary glands rushed busily, eagerly, to her mouth. "Is it— am I— oh, blast, how do I look?"

She said, unintelligibly, something.

He felt around, made sure the correct number of things, the correct shape of things, the correct fundamental thingness of things was all, not to put too fine a point on it, correct. Then, trying to be discreet about it, he checked out the size of his feet. The Doctor had always prided himself on putting no faith in urban legends, but he relied on the size of his feet as a basic indicator, till he was no longer in mixed company and could find out for himself, the size of something else. For the record, during the previous ten regenerations, from behind the lavatory door had drifted eight triumphant yells, followed by a very smug-looking Doctor, for he believed very firmly in constantly bettering yourself, and two disappointed, "Oh, bollocks," because sometimes, biology just lets you down.

His feet, from his perspective, looked enormous.

He looked back up at Rose, and a slow smile spread across his face.

"What, no 'Who are you and what've you done with the Doctor?'"

"Not this time," she managed finally. "Give me some credit for learning."

"Some," he agreed, and patted himself down experimentally, quite aware that she was eyeing him like a joyfully suicidal moth eyes a lightbulb. He felt euphoric. He always felt euphoric after regenerating. He felt fresh, and new. He always felt fresh and new after regenerating. He felt like shagging Rose senseless immediately. This wasn't always a given; therefore, this body clearly had been given an extra shot of that certain something or, as he felt inclined to call it, though regenerations one through ten would have been embarrassed and disgraced to hear it, "mojo."

"So," he said, and smiled at her. "What do you think?"

She made a sound like a whimper, but pulled herself together enough to speak. Brave girl, his Rose. Plucky.

"You do know," she said, "that you get younger and sexier every time you regenerate?"

He cocked his head at her and grinned. "That so?"

"Regenerate once more," she said under her breath, sidling closer with her eyes aflame, "and the TARDIS is likely to explode."

Its technically a tragedy that leads to this, but she can't help but like the consequences.

He's ginger, this time.

_Everywhere._


End file.
